


The Weight of Living

by ChasingSunlight



Series: Everything I Never Said [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29661735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChasingSunlight/pseuds/ChasingSunlight
Summary: Whoever said that forgiveness is something you give to yourself was both a liar and an idiot.Forgiveness is violent, ugly, heavy, unhinged.Doesn't mean it's not worth it though.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Everything I Never Said [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2179686
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Head the warnings for depression, suicidal thoughts, and violence.

The first time it happens is approximately thirty seconds after they leave him outside the bar. 

He doesn’t mean to do it. Really, he doesn’t even think about it. He just...does it. His eyes move from Joe’s glare up on the staircase to the chilled water before him, then down to his feet where he sees it laying there.

It’s nothing more than a stone, smoothed over from years of water crashing over it. Idly, he thinks of how many years it must take to wash every rough bit of it away until there is nothing left but a smooth, unblemished surface. Before he can process the why of it, he bends down and picks the rock up. 

When he surfaces from a bender three days later, the weight of it in his jeans’ pocket reminds him that his exile is of his own making, no one else’s. 

\--

The terms of his exile are this;

He will remain in solitude, no contact with those he betrayed, for one hundred years.

He will check in with Copley via phone call once a week.

He will notify Copley of any changes in address or telephone number. 

The last, he suspects, is so that he can be tracked, so that he can’t find a way to betray them again. He doesn't’ blame them. He doesn’t begrudge them any of the conditions they set upon him in the wake of his mistakes.

He holes up in a shitty apartment, forwards the address to Copley, and drinks himself into oblivion every day. He sets an alarm on his phone for the day before his check in so there’s enough time to sober up before Copley calls. 

He places the stone on the shelf above the kitchen sink and stares at his while he answers Copley’s questions. 

_No, he has not had contact with anyone associated with Merrick._

_No, he only divulged one safe house location._

_Yes, he will talk to Copley in one week, same time as always._

When the call disconnects, he walks across the room and picks the stone up. He places it back in his pocket. He doesn’t think about Andy’s mortality or Joe’s shouting in the lab or Nile’s acceptance or Nicky’s hurt gaze. Instead, he thinks of how in one hundred years, if he repents hard enough, maybe his soul will be as unbleshimed as the stone in his pocket. 

\--

He is two hundred years old and has died more ways than he can count. He has been hanged, shot, stabbed, disemboweled, blown up, and suffocated. He has watched his skin knit together after being flayed apart. He has felt his ribs slide back into place with the ease of water over the shore. He has seen flesh pulled back together like a mockery of nature. He has felt each inch of his spine creak back into place like floorboards on a ship. He has been remade so many times that there is nothing left of the man who once held his wife and children. 

He is Theseus’ ship, plied piece by piece and unwillingly made anew. 

Sometimes, he wishes that all of those deaths had left their mark. That he could look down at his torso and see puckered scars and rippled edges of skin, if only to prove to himself that those things had happened, that the pain lingering in his memories was something shared with his flesh.

His body is a cage. His mind is its keeper. 

  
  


\--

The second time it happens, he is drunk. It takes a lot to stay drunk when your liver can constantly filter out everything you put into it, but God is he trying. 

He doesn’t remember going back to the water. He doesn’t remember stumbling home from the bar. He doesn’t remember ripping the shower curtain in a fumbling attempt at puking in the toilet instead of on the floor. He doesn’t remember how he got to bed, only that when he wakes, he’s lying on the threadbare mattress, shirt soaked with sweat and smelling of vomit. When his head stops pounding and he’s able to open his eyes to glance around the room, there is a pile of rocks in the corner. 

They’re all the same color as the first one. 

His hands shake when he places them in his pockets.

\--

Nile comes to him first. 

_“I told them they should let you stay, as long as you apologized.” she says. Her braids swing down her back when she tilts her head to look at him. Her face is kind but her eyes are cold._

_“I’m sorry.” he whispers._

_“Say it like you mean it, Booker.” she says, shoving his chest. He stumbles back a step._

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry” he repeats. He is sorry. He never meant for any of them to get hurt. He only meant to kill himself._

_“I said, say it like you mean it!” Nile repeated. Another push, another step back. “Say it like you mean it, Booker! Say it like you mean it! SAY IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT, BOOKER!” she screams, pushing him and pushing him and pushing him._

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He cries, step backwards after step backwards, until he’s falling, falling, dying and falling and dying and dying and dying and-_ He gasps awake. 

His face is wet with tears. 

The stones sit in the corner, mocking him.

\--

Three months into his exile, he lies down on the floor of his bedroom (the stones, the stones cover the bed and the nightstand and the windowsill and the broken dresser and he doesn’t know how they all got there) and doesn’t get back up. He lost his first family to time and his second family to his poor choices and getting up is something he cannot do today, if ever. 

He turns his head to the side and his eyes level with the stone closest to him. It is a dull grey with a smooth surface. All the stones are smooth. Drawing it close to him, he sighs out a stuttered breath. He presses the cool surface to his lips, breaths against it.

“How do I keep living, after everything I’ve done?” he whispers. 

The stone says nothing back.

\--

Andy comes to him next. 

_“This place is a shithole, Booker.” she says, kicking the rubbish pile by the door. She has her labrys in hand, but the pull of her shoulders is relaxed, disinterested. Booker watches as she scans the room- the piles of stones, the dishes in the sink from a week ago when food was something Booker was interested in._

_“You’re doing a shit job of living Booker. Don’t you remember what I said?” she asks, grabbing his chin and forcing him to meet her gaze. It burns. “Don’t you remember what I said?”_

_He can’t remember anything. His mind is blank. He has no thoughts._

_“Don’t you remember what I said?” she repeats, bringing her labrys up under his chin. His teeth knock against one another as the head of the weapon pushes his head up. “ Book, don’t you remember what I said?”_

He shudders awake with blood in his mouth from where he’s bit his tongue. The flesh pulls together and his breath stutters. He does remember what she said, now that he’s awake. 

_Bigger wounds take longer to heal._

One hundred years. Is one hundred years long enough to heal the wounds that he has made? 

\--

  
  


He was always a coward. 

In his past life, it was cowardice in a uniform. He never believed in Napoleon's causes, never felt a desire to serve men and country. He went because he was drafted and he deserted because he was frightened and he died alone and afraid and rightfully branded a coward. 

When he woke, decidedly not dead, in the throws of the Russian winter, he was still a coward. When he dreamed of their faces, when he froze to death several times, when he gasped awake after however many days and saw them hovering around him like a desert mirage, he was a coward. When he went back to his family instead of accepting his immortality for what it was, he was a coward. When he met with Copley behind their backs, he was a coward. And when he told Nile to leave him there, strapped to the table in Merrick’s lab, he was a coward too.

What is a coward if not a man with no spine?

But he has felt his spine break and bend and heal and snap back into place. So what does that make him?

\--

Nicky comes to him in a haze.

_“Take it out, Booker, please.” Nicky begs. There are needles protruding from every part of his body, a grotesque image made real in Booker’s mind. Nicky’s skin is torn in all of the places the needles sit, made worse by Nicky’s panicked struggles. “Take them, please, take them out.”_

_“I can’t.” Booker says. When he goes to lift his arms, he finds them pinned down by Joe, whose face is neutral and unmoving. He is a shadow of his real self. “Joe, let me go, let me help.”_

_“You are helping.” Shadow Joe says, pressing Booker’s wrist until the bones creak under his grasp. “You’re helping us die.”_

_Booker shakes his head, back and forth, tries to dislodge Joe’s grips. “No, no, it was only supposed to be me.”_

_“Take them out, Booker. They hurt, Book. Help me.” Nicky begs. Blood runs in rivulets down his body as the wounds try to close around the needles. “Please, please.” Nicky cries, pale eyes wet with unshed tears._

_“Let me go, Joe.”_

_“This is what you wanted Booker.” Shadow Joe says, head cocked curiously as he looks between Booker and Nicky, face expressionless. “I’m giving you what you wanted. Isn’t this what you wanted, brother?”_

He wakes, stomach heaving and throat constricting over the edge of the mattress. Vomit splatters on the floor, pooling in viscous puddles along the mattress. He chokes at the phantom pressure on his wrist, rubs them against one another as he heaves again. His throat is on fire, tears pour down his face, and acid crawls up his sinuses as his coughing and spluttering comes to an end. 

The smell of the room sickens him.

_Take them out, Booker._

_Help me._

_They hurt, Book, please._

_This is what you wanted._

_This is what you wanted._

“Stop!” he shouts, swinging his fist up to meet his forehead. He beats against his head until the voices quiet and he’s panting with effort. He grabs the closest thing to him- a stone- and hurls it against the wall with all his might. Bits of plaster rain down to the floor from where it makes impact with the adjacent wall. He grabs another one and throws it, then another, then another, then another and another and another and another until the only thing he can see is the holes in the wall and not the holes in Nicky’s skin.

_This place is a shithole, Book._

“This place is a shithole.” he says, watching as plaster particles and dust float in the reflection of light pouring in through the window. He heaves himself off the filthy mattress and grabs a t-shirt he discarded on the floor months ago. Wetting it in the dingy bathroom sink, he goes to wipe down the window sill. Layers of dirt pick up in its wake. He scrubs at the sill and its peeling paint until there is not one speck of dust on its surface. He wipes and counts the swipes of the shirt (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven) until the sill is completely clean. Something settles in his chest. 

It is like the stones becoming smooth, only this time he’s in charge of it. 

He moves to the next sill (one, two three, four, five, six, seven, eight), then on to the window panes (one, two, three, four, five). The dishes in the sink have been there for days, if not months. There is soap and a sponge and scalding water and he scrubs at them (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve) until their surfaces are clean and his hands are red and blistered. The skin creaks and cracks back into place. He plunges them into the water again and again, they turn red and blister. And again, they heal. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve times he lets them scald. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve times he lets them heal. Then he moves on to the rest of the apartment. 

The trash, the food rotting in the fridge, the filth covering the bottom of the barely used tub, the ring around the toilet, the vomit on the floor beside the mattress. He counts each time, comforted by the control of the numbers and the repetitiveness of the task. He pours the rest of his liquor stash down the drain, even the little bottles he’s hidden in the linen closet, under the sink, and under the couch. He scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until every surface of the apartment is clean, until his hands cramp with the effort. 

He drags the filthy mattress down to the alleyway outside the apartment building and leaves it there. It’s dirty, so it can’t stay. The dresser is next. He takes the drawers out one by one and places them next to the mattress. He leans the nightstand, with its chipped paint and water stains, next to the dresser drawers. He puts the lamp, with its ripped shade, on top of the nightstand. When the bedroom is cleared of every piece of furniture, he sweeps the plaster up and mops the floorboards until the sun reflects off their surface. He takes the curtains down and adds them to the pile of laundry he has sitting by the door to take down to the basement to wash. He takes the sponge from the kitchen and scrubs the walls (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eights) times up and down until the only evidence of his dream are the rock shaped holes in the wall. He keeps scrubbing and dragging furniture down into the alleyway and swiping away dirt until the apartment is empty of possessions and grime. 

When he looks around- minutes, hours, days later- the surfaces of his home are as smooth as the stones. The apartment is empty besides himself, his duffle bag, and his pile of newly washed clothing. When he looks at himself in the newly cleaned mirror, he realizes that _he_ is dirty. His hair is greasy and lank, dirt smudges his skin, and his hands are still a little bloody from where they’ve cracked over and over and over again.

He peels the (dirty) clothing from his (dirty) body and gets into the (clean) shower. He flicks the handle until the water is at its hottest setting. It burns his skin but he has to be _clean_. He scrubs at every inch of his body (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven) until the skins is bright red but most importantly, clean. Anything with a count higher than seven is clean.

When he gets out and dressed, he sits on the floor next to the pile of rocks. He picks each one up, turns it over in his hand, and places it down again. He repeats the process one, two, three more times. Then, he picks them up and begins to line the empty bedroom floor with them. He lines them up in neat rows of twelve, evenly spread, until there is no empty space. He sits in the doorway of the bedroom and looks at them in their neat little rows. Twelve by twelve by twelve by twelve by twelve by twelve.

He falls asleep against the doorframe.

\--

In his dreams, they come to him one by one. Always with anger, always with a weapon. In his dreams he always dies at their hands. 

It’s no less than he deserves.

\--

Every day, he cleans the apartment (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven) and cleans himself (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven), and brings more rocks to line up twelve by twelve by twelve. When he fills up the bedroom floor, he moves to the living room. When the living room is filled, he moves to the kitchen. Then the bathroom then the bedroom closet, then the pantry floor. 

He lines them up over and over again until every floor and surface is covered in smooth, perfect stones. He counts them and counts them and counts them until the weight in his chest lessens. Then, he falls asleep in the doorway of the bedroom, the only uncovered spot in the whole apartment, surrounded by nothing but smooth, smooth stones.

\--

Time passes like it always passes- unobtrusive and elusive. Time means nothing when you live forever.

Every day, he counts the stones and every day the number stays the same and every day he resolutely does not think about his family or Andy or Nicky or Nile or Joe. Instead, he counts his stones and feels their smooth surface against his palm and cleans his apartment and scrubs his body clean and checks in with Copley and when the pressure in his chest is too much, he relines the stones in the bedroom and talks to them.

He tells the stones about Andy, first. How she is-was- like his big sister. She was gruff and badass and could wield hundreds of weapons with the ease of breathing. He tells the stones about their jokes and their bets and the baklava and the way her hands felt when they cupped his head in the safe house as he woke up with his insides on the outside of his body. He confesses to the stones that he lied, that he didn’t make his choice to help himself and Andy die. He made his choice only for himself. Because he wanted to die. And he used his family to try to kill himself. 

Next, he tells them about Quynh, how he’s dreamed of her for two hundred years. He’s felt her die more times than he can count; it is as though he has spent two hundred years drowning alongside her. He has felt her pain and her anger and her fear and her betrayal. She is a wild thing locked in an underwater prison. If his own body is a cage for his grief, then hers is a cage for her madness. 

Then, he tells them about his family. His sweet wife, with kind eyes and an even kinder heart. His sons, so small and then not so small. He tells them how he used to hold his boys in his arms and walk them to the bakery down the street, how they would get pastries and feed the gulls by the water and pickup flowers for Marie on the way back home. He tells them of a thousand moments where love for his family overwhelmed any difficult moment. He tells them of their deaths and his guilt and how desperately he tried to save his son. He tells them about how now, when he wants to punish himself for living, he simply thinks of his son’s shouts echoing in the halls, accusing him of withholding a cure. How the shouts echo in his mind, over and over again, until they are the only thing he can hear. He tells them how afraid he is that one day, even those angry accusations will fade from his memory like the last ebbs of the sun setting. That one day, his family will fade from him slowly and permanently, just like his own will to live. 

Then, he tells them about his brothers, Nicky and Joe. He tells them about decades of art museums and bad wine and football by Joe’s side. Cooking and laughter and bets with Nicky. He tells the stones about the depth of Nicky and Joe’s love for each other and how every passing glance sowed a seed of jealousy in himself that he did not know how not to water. He tells them how kind Joe and Nicky were to him, how they tried to include him, how their faces pinched in disappointment when he rebuked their care and questions of his well being. He tells them how acidic two hundred years in the shadow of such a love can feel when your own love has been lost to time. He confesses, tearfully, that he had been willing to let them be strapped to those tables and experimented on for however long it took if it meant that he could one day die. His guilt claws its way up his throat as he recounts how desperately he wanted to be free of his immortality, even though it meant betraying two men who have only ever tried to love him.

Finally, he tells them about how Copley came to be. How it was never really planned, but when the opportunity arose, how he took it and ran. How he told Copley that Nicky would never let them turn down a mission involving children. How he had forged the documents of the mission himself. How he had given up the location of the safe house and the rest of their secrets without any prompting. How when he said that it was only supposed to be him, that was a lie. How it was always going to be all of them, tied to Booker’s choices. How he found it easier to lie to the people around him, all that time, when he knew that in the end he would be dead and would never have to face their judgement. How when he found himself alive, again, he faced their judgment anyways. How he wishes he could take it all back, if only so he would never have to think of the darkest parts of his heart that, even now, wishes just a little bit that his plan had worked. 

When he is done talking, the stones are lined up perfectly. Twelve by twelve by twelve.

\--

The routine is the only thing that matters.

He devotes himself to it, wholeheartedly, until everything fades to the background.

The stones give him control, help him pace things out. 

He is okay.

Everything is okay.

Everything is fine. 

\--

Except one day it isn’t fine.

He has cleaned the apartment and scrubbed his body and he is counting the last of the stones in the bedroom when suddenly, his vision spots out. He sinks heavily to his knees and leans against the bedroom doorframe, letting a wave of nausea run its course. When the spots clear from his vision, he realizes his hands are shaking. Confused, he draws them up to his face and watches in fascination how they swim in and out of his vision. 

He goes to brush it aside and get back up, finish counting, but he finds his legs don’t have the energy to move. He runs a hand over his thighs, willing them to work, to let him get back up. He isn’t done yet. Everything isn’t _clean_ yet. 

But his legs don’t listen and his heart is pounding so slowly in his chest and his hands are still shaking and he runs his hands over his body to look for some wound or other explanation when his brain kind of stutters to the realization that his body doesn’t feel like his body anymore. It’s thin and cold and the skin is raw and sallow. He thinks back to the last time he ate and comes to the stunning realization that he can’t remember. He can’t remember the last time he ate or drank or slept more than a few hours because he was making his life _clean_ , he was _fixing_ it, he was paying _penance_.

He thinks that maybe he should find his phone. His phone is...somewhere. Too far away. It doesn’t matter. He has no one to call for help anyways. His body will come around, it always does eventually. He might die here, starve to death or something, but he’ll come back.

And in the meantime, he has his stones.

He curls up on the floor against the doorframe and draws his knees to his chest. He picks one of the stones up and cradles it to his chest. Its weight in comforting. 

He thinks, as his eyes drift shut, that he can just stay here forever.

  
  



	2. Part Two

Nile has always been good at puzzles.

When she was seven, her dad brought home a puzzle with a dog on it from one of his tours. They finished it together in the living room, pieces spread wide over the scratched coffee table, eating salty popcorn out of the green bowl her mom found at Goodwill for a dollar. Every time he came home, her dad would bring a new puzzle with different pictures and more pieces, until their completion turned into months long projects. If she missed her dad, she’d go to her desk and try to fit more pieces into the framework of edges they had made before he left. 

Being with her new family is exactly like fitting the inner pieces of a puzzle together. Granted, there’s thousands of years and a heavy dash of unknown making up the inner pieces, but it’s a puzzle nonetheless. So Nile does what she’s always done when the pieces are trying to work themselves out- observe. 

Nile watches as Joe and Nicky try to hide that they’re still recovering from the lab. She watches them dance around one another, slightly out of step with what is clearly a well worn routine. There is a hesitation to their touch, to their voices, that Nile would bet wasn’t there before. No one can love another person for nine hundred years and still be hesitant with a comforting caress.

Nile watches Andy scoff at the notion of mortality, at the idea that she isn’t invincible. She watches her drink and bluff and shrug off any concern aimed at her. She watches the jagged pieces give way to something tired and defeated. She watches the guilt that blossoms over Andy’s face when she thinks no one is watching.

Nile watches Joe join them in the living room in the safehouse they’ve holed up in, eyes puffy and nose pink. He laughs but his eyes don’t crinkle all the way at the corners. He smiles but it lacks meaning. He fills the room with stories and jokes and comments and doesn’t mean a single one of them because he’s a hundred yards from anything remotely okay. She watches him unpack a wooden case of paints and then put them back away with a sigh. She watches him sit for hours outside, staring off into the distance with a blank expression. She watches him flinch at unexpected noises and twist his hands in anxiety when Nicky leaves his line of sight.

She watches Nicky as his quietness turns to silences. She watches the tension in his jaw as he reaches out to Joe, who sometimes flinches back before he realizes who is trying to touch him. She watches Nicky pad gently down the stairs to make tea when he thinks everyone is asleep. She watches him throw himself into caring for them all. She watches him fret over Andy’s wound and Joe’s lack of sleep and Nile’s integration into her new life. She watches him cook elaborate meals for them and clean the safehouse and guard the door at night and place blankets over Nile when she falls asleep on the couch and bring Joe water when he’s staring blankly for too many hours and offer to change Andy’s bandages. She watches him face his grief with kindness, with endless tasks, in a way that is so reminiscent of her own mom that Nile has to swallow back tears sometimes at the thought of being cared for. 

She watches Joe and Nicky become Joe _and_ Nicky, a single soul in two bodies, once more. _I cannot cry over him anymore_ , she overhears Joe say as she’s walking back upstairs from the kitchen. _I know_ , Nicky says. She pauses in the doorway of the living room, breath caught in her throat as she watches them embrace one another. It makes her heart ache to watch these two men, these two _good_ men, ache so keenly. She doesn’t linger in the doorway, but that night at dinner Nicky runs a gentle hand down Joe’s back, up and down, as they eat, not a trace of hesitance in sight. When they come for breakfast the next morning, there is a calmness settled between them that wasn’t there the night before. 

She watches as all three members of her new family realize, time and time again, that Booker is gone. She watches Andy pour two shots of vodka. She watches Joe turn to the side to gloat when his team scores. She watches as Nicky hands a paring knife to thin air. She watches them continually fall into the empty spaces in their lives. She watches them grimace, cry, flinch, white lie, brush off, and ignore the empty spaces as though if they don’t confront it, then it will go away on its own. 

She watches and she watches and she watches, until the puzzle begins to take shape. 

And the picture she comes up with is this. There are Booker shaped holes everywhere and the puzzle isn’t going to be complete until Booker comes back home.

\--

Nile is two years in to her immortal life when the puzzle begins to take a different shape. 

“Booker missed a check in.” Copley says from the other end of the line.

They’ve been holed up at a safe house in Eastern Germany for the past sixth month, gathering intel on a human trafficking ring. The entire room flinches at Copley’s words. Andy takes it off speaker and moves to the other room. When she comes back, she doesn’t say a word. She throws her go bag on the bed and starts unceremoniously shoving belonging into it. The others follow suit.

They’re on a flight to Paris two hours later. 

\--

When Andy kicks down the door to Booker’s apartment, Nile is prepared to see all manner of things; blood, guts, broken furniture, a kidnapping gone wrong. What she does not expect is the apartment to be a blank slate. 

She also does not expect the rocks. 

Or to see Booker slumped in the doorway of what must be the bedroom, though there isn’t any furniture in it.

It feels like an out of body experience for Nile, who once again is pushed to the margins of a group she barely knows, unsure of what to do.

So she watches.

She watches as Nicky nods an affirmative after pressing steady fingers to Booker’s neck to check his pulse. She watches the tight set of Andy’s face as she nods at Joe, who gathers Booker into his arms as thought he weighs nothing. He might actually weigh nothing, to be fair, because she can see his ribs through his thin t-shirt. She watches as Booker barely responds to being lifted, other than to mutter incoherently, hands clenching back and forth against his chest. The bags under his closed eyes are a stark contrast to his sickly pallor. She wonders if immortals can even get sick. Is Booker sick? Is that what’s happening? 

She watches as Andy highjacks a van off a side street and Joe carefully maneuvers Booker into his lap in the back seat, concern and anger warring across his features. She watches as Nicky guides them to another safe house and gathers Booker, still unconscious, from Joe’s lap and into his own arms. She watches Nicky lay Booker out on the bed upstairs and take a protective position next to him, a hand laid solidly across Booker’s chest. She watches Andy and Joe stand in the doorway. She watches all three immortals wait and wait and wait for their brother to wake up.

She waits with them.

She waits and waits and waits. 

While she waits, she takes a good look at every single one of her new family and realizes that they all look, to some degree, exactly how she had felt the day of her dad’s funeral.

The resignation and self-blame on Andy’s face. The anger coiled tight in Joe’s shoulders. The grief and sadness lurking in the shadow of Nicky’s jaw. 

And then there’s Booker.

Booker, who looks like he hasn’t slept or eaten in months. Whose breath is a little shaky and whose skin is sticky with sweat. Whose apartment had been bare of the things needed for survival, but been covered in rocks. Whose life seems like one big bite of bad luck and a healthy side of bad choices. Booker, who fucked up and got sent away and clearly had not faired well in the absence of his family.

A chill runs through Nile that has nothing to do with the temperature in the room and everything to do with the feeling that comes before everything falls to pieces. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I lost all of my friends in the post-break up divorce so like, have my wildly projected feelings as I learn to move on from the fall out from one of the most heart wrenching betrayals I've ever experienced.


End file.
